HENRY NOEL BRAILSFORDTHE WAR OF STEEL AND GOLDA STUDY OF THE ARMED PEACE

CHAPTER VII

THE CONTROL OF POLICY

A WRITER who advocates the effective extension of democratic
control to foreign affairs must expect to meet a series of familiar
objections. Where will you find among the masses of any modern
State the knowledge and experience which are required for the
conduct of a nation's external policy? How shall the Lancashire
weaver or the Durham miner, who know no language but their own,
who do not travel and have little leisure to read, judge of the
designs of Germany, the ambitions of Russia or the needs of Egypt?
They can judge shrewdly enough of an Insurance Act or an Eight
Hours Act. These things, complicated though they are, come within
the round of their daily experience. They are the persons concerned,
and whether they judge ill or well, you cannot refuse them the
right to judge without disputing every principle of self-government
and freedom. But foreign questions, it will be said, do not touch
them so nearly. They lack the means to form a judgment, and in
any event their interests are only slightly and remotely affected.
The conclusion from this objection, however it is phrased, will
be that foreign policy is best managed by some moderate statesman,
guided by an expert professional service, and subject to the promptings,
the encouragements and the criticisms of the governing class and
the higher world of finance and commerce, which has the experience
to judge of these recondite matters and undoubtedly has a great
interest at stake. This is the system under which we live, and
probably it reflects fairly enough the general trend of middle-class
thinking in England. There is only one context in which Imperialists
of either party affect to think that the general body of electors
does or should control foreign policy, and that is when they are
telling women that they are quite unfit to possess the vote, because
they are unfit to judge Imperial issues. In nine cases out of
ten the speaker who flatters himself on this male prerogative
is as reluctant to trust the mass of men as he is to enfranchise
women. The plain fact is that the average man has no more control
over foreign policy than the voteless women.

The democratic answer to this objection is simple and direct.
We do not desire the rule of the majority because we cherish any
illusion about the intelligence or the virtues of the masses.
Like average men in all classes, they are content to have their
thinking done for them by their leaders and their newspapers.
We do not count brains in a modern State; we count interests.
The ballot is a rough method of deciding the greatest good of
the greatest number. If the greatest number is muddle-headed in
perceiving its greatest good, it must learn its lesson by hard
experience. The anti-democratic attitude in foreign affairs involves
a naked claim that certain interests shall rule. We have analysed
these interests in a previous chapter. At their head are the great
bankers and contractors. Their rank and file is composed of the
comfortable class which invests abroad, and of those families
which see in the services of Empire a career for their sons. We
have traced the effect of their pressure in the gradual identification
of the investor's interest with the national interest, the promotion
of the export of capital as a quasi-official national undertaking,
the use of diplomacy to support concession-hunters' claims, the
marking off of spheres of interest as the preserve of our financiers,
and, finally, as a result of the rivalry which these processes
engender, the struggle for a balance of power, and the consequent
inflation of armaments. The various links in the chain hang together
in a perfect sequence, and manifestly the chain has been formed
by a national policy dictated by the interest of the possessing
classes. It is not inevitable ; it is not axiomatic, it is not
a necessary deduction from the idea of the State. The whole chain
would be cut, and the fatal consequences of its last links would
fall from us, if one point of policy were decided otherwise. If
we could but say that an investor, a contractor, a money-lender,
when he trades beyond these islands, trades at his own risk and
must ask the mother-country neither for backing to reach success,
nor for protection to avoid loss, the whole fatal chain of consequences
might be stayed and the impulse checked which has led us into
this desolating rivalry with all that it involves of waste and
folly and fear. Such questions are not to be decided by pure reason.
Ought the contractor and the banker to be backed in their private
ventures abroad? The answer will depend on the nature of the audience
to which you address your question. All England would have answered
with a No before the days of Palmerston. The Tory Party would
have said No while it was still mainly the party of landlords
and country gentlemen. Carry your question to the Carlton Club
to-day and the answer will certainly be Yes. Take it to the Stock
Exchange, and members will be amazed that you should dare to ask
such a question at all, and stare at you as though you were a
bombthrower or an Early Christian. At the National Liberal Club
the answer would be doubtful, compromising, and far from unanimous.
Carry your question to a Trade Union Congress or a Labour Conference,
and the answer will be as unhesitating and as united as it was
at Capel Court. But it will be No. Move away from all these crowds,
collate their answers and then enquire whether it really and obviously
is a national interest that diplomacy should support finance.
It is so, if the nation wills it. But the nation as a whole is
never consulted, has never considered the question, is barely
aware that such a question exists as a possible subject of debate.
Yet it underlies our whole external policy ; it is the stocks
on which our Dreadnoughts are built. The Lancashire weaver and
the Durham miner ought to consider it. It concerns them as closely
as the gentlemen in the Carlton Club. It would indeed reduce the
total income of the club by a heavy ratio if it were answered
otherwise. But at the same time it would release a portion of
the national income sufficient to transform the Insurance Act,
and to remove the defects of which the weaver and the miner complain.
The voteless woman from this standpoint is no less directly affected.
For a real judgment of national interests we must go to the nation
at large. While we evade this judgment we are allowing a single
class, deeply interested in the issue, to. conduct our national
affairs unchecked. It conducts them, as all history would teach
us to expect, for its own profit. The real problem of the balance
of power is the problem of the adjustment of the interests of
the few and the many which co-exist within each national State.
Let us not be deterred by the ignorance of the masses or the complication
of the problem. Democracy has its invention to meet that difficulty.
The system of representative government exists to solve it. The
mischief in our case is that our representatives have all but
ceased to concern themselves with foreign affairs.

In an earlier chapter we have traced the impotence of the House
of Commons to control the foreign policy of the Empire. It is
preoccupied with domestic questions. It lacks both the time and
the knowledge to check our diplomacy. It has fewer constitutional
rights in this field than any other Parliament of Europe. Its
action is limited by the party system, which makes it practically
impossible to dissent from the external policy of the Government
without undoing its domestic work. It has accepted the doctrine
of "continuity" which excludes foreign affairs from
the conflict of parties, and thereby hands them over to the unchallenged
influence of a governing class, which in society, in the press,
and in the diplomatic service is always, so to speak, "in
office," despite the fluctuations of national opinion. It
is, finally, frustrated by a practice which withholds from it
all official knowledge of policies, treaties and negotiations,
until they are already accomplished facts which Parliament may
regret but cannot alter.

To bring about a complete change, and to invest democracy with
a real control over foreign affairs, would require little less
than a revolution in our habits of thought and our constitutional
practice. Let us cherish no illusions about the difficulties of
the task which we are setting ourselves. It would be easier to
overthrow the monarchy than to depose the inner governing class
from the authority which it has usurped over the external policy
of the Empire. The worst obstacle of all is that the House of
Commons has in great measure lost its earlier instincts of independence
and its habits of self-assertion. It is grotesquely sensitive
about its dignity, when some young woman affronts it by disturbing
its debates. But to the overgrown authority of the Cabinet and
to the coercion of the party "whips" it is placidly
resigned. These are moral and intellectual weaknesses which no
agitation can remedy. They will continue while our rigid party
system endures, and while they continue we shall enjoy only a
simulacrum of representative government. One may, however, note
certain changes of a general character which would tend to strengthen
the House of Commons, and therefore in some measure to exert a
favourable influence upon the control of foreign affairs. Proportional
representation would assure each member that he had behind him
a real constituency of opinions. The entry of a third party into
politics ought to have done more than it has yet done to break
up the traditional party system, but Independent Labour struggles
helplessly against the original sin of its birth. It cannot be
independent while nearly all its members depend for their election
on Liberal votes, and this dependence will continue so long as
we retain the single-member constituency. Nor will it ever be
possible to secure a sincere vote in the House of Commons on foreign
questions, so long as parties worship the fetish of collective
Cabinet responsibility, which Cabinets have themselves set up
in the interest of discipline. It ought to be possible to vote
against a Minister's opinion without thereby demanding either
his resignation or that of the Government. It ought to be possible
for the House to dismiss a Minister without evicting all his colleagues.
The House should be free in short, at its own pleasure, to distinguish
between a vote which expresses an opinion to which it expects
a Minister to bow, and a vote which expresses its want of confidence
either in a single Minister or a whole Cabinet. Until these reforms
are carried, we can have nothing but a fettered House of Commons.
Our whole political life suffers by the delay, but perhaps the
conduct of foreign affairs suffers the most seriously. On most
of the broad issues; of domestic policy a majority in the House,
if it has the country behind it, will in the long run have its
way. Foreign questions are the exception, because they are not
the grounds on which the average elector casts his vote.

There can, however, be little hope of securing due attention
for external questions, without some fundamental change in our
constitutional machinery. The chief obstacle is the inordinate
complexity of modern politics. To say that Parliament has no time
to deal at once with English, Irish and Imperial affairs is to
state only half the difficulty. It is obliged to range itself,
and to form its parties in accordance with the most vital issue
of the moment, and that issue is almost always a domestic question.
It is partly the imperative necessity of simplifying issues that
has led to the growth of the doctrine of "continuity"
in foreign policy. The real verdict of the country must be obtained
on the vital questions of home policy. It is hard enough even
so to detach one issue, and to say that the electors have had
or ever can have a chance of pronouncing on one definite home
subject, even when it is of the first importance. But the complication
would be intolerable if foreign issues were also presented for
judgment. This consideration has reinforced some others, to induce
both sides to remove external questions from the area of party
controversy. This instinctive simplification was probably inevitable,
but it has had from the democratic standpoint the most disastrous
consequences. In removing external questions from the field of
party controversy, it has withdrawn them for all practical purposes
from the decision of public opinion. The sections of society which
make their influence felt outside the mechanism of parties are
those which have wealth and social standing behind them. The average
man is formidable only by his vote, and of this weapon the convention
of "continuity" has disarmed him.

There is no real remedy for this breakdown in our constitutional
machinery, save by the separation of external from domestic issues
in some scheme of federal "devolution." Towards this
solution we are moving inevitably and rapidly. In one form or
another we are bound within the next few years to evolve some
scheme of "Home Rule All-Round." The problem has been
approached too exclusively from the Irish standpoint. Realising
that we must give autonomy to Ireland, we see that this concession
will hardly be workable unless we go on to do the like for Scotland
and Wales. An Imperial Parliament will be left when the process
is completed, which will be free to concern itself primarily with
the whole range of Imperial questions, from foreign policy to
the fighting services, from tariffs to the government of India
and the Crown Colonies. It would lie far beyond the scope of this
book to dwell in any detail on this inevitable change. But it
seems relevant to urge that in the consideration of this constitutional
reform, we should give due weight to the positive need of creating
a Chamber whose duty it will be to deal, as the German Reichstag
does, primarily with Imperial questions. To think of this Imperial
Parliament merely as the shell which will be left when the subordinate
national Parliaments have been created, would be a laughable short-sightedness.
We need this Parliament. We who are democrats ought to create
it with enthusiasm and eagerness, because it offers us for the
first time in our history the chance of subjecting our external
policy to the real judgment of public opinion. The voter will
acquire his share in the control of the Empire, only when he has
the chance of electing a Parliament which will deal mainly with
Imperial affairs.

When the time comes for the remodelling of the Constitution,
the democratic parties, if they are alert, will insist on removing
some of the obvious defects which distinguish our Parliament unfavourably
in comparison with the Chambers of other European peoples. Some
of these defects have been considered in a previous chapter (pp. 128-154). It is hardly necessary to argue
that treaties ought to be submitted in draft to Parliament before
they are ratified and become binding. No one who professes any
ideal of self-government, however Conservative, could defend the
conclusion of such an instrument of alliance as the Japanese treaty
by a Cabinet which represents one party alone, and may be nearing
the end of its term of office. A solemn obligation, by which the
nation contracts to fight, in circumstances unknown, in the dim
future, ought to be undertaken, if at all, by the representatives
of the whole nation. One would indeed wish to prescribe that treaties
of alliance must be sanctioned by something larger than a bare
majority of the House. It is true that if it is attempted, as
the United States Senate often does, to amend a Treaty, Parliament
would expose the Foreign Office to grave embarrassments. But an
adroit Secretary will learn how to provide against that inconvenience
by ascertaining, before he completes his negotiations, what the
trend of Parliamentary opinion is. It is hardly less axiomatic
that declarations of war ought to be made only with the sanction
of Parliament. Accustomed as we are to our party-ridden Commons,
it is difficult to imagine circumstances in which the House would
refuse, amid the excitement of a warlike crisis, to sanction a
war to which the Government was already committed. But even as
things are to-day such a provision would impose some check upon
a headstrong Ministry. It would be compelled to measure public
opinion carefully. It would not dare to move faster than the Opposition
allowed. It would be obliged, finally, to meet with some show
of reason a motion that the dispute be referred to arbitration
or to the mediation of neutral Powers. The Labour Party, one hopes,
would know how to improve that opportunity.

A House which really meant to control foreign affairs would
not be content to assert its control over treaties and declarations
of war. It is the conduct of affairs between one great crisis
and another which ends in the treaty or the war. What has to be
controlled is precisely what is least known ---our policy in pressing
for concessions or in drawing the boundaries of spheres of influence.
What is wanted is some mechanism of control which can operate
steadily and quietly, while an affair is still in the stage of
confidential negotiation. This mechanism must admit of secrecy
; it must also impose control without involving at every turn
the fate of the Government and the continuance in office of the
Foreign Secretary. We ought not, of course, to commit ourselves
to the principle that foreign affairs ought to be conducted secretly.
From that assumption spring half the evils of diplomacy. The veil
of secrecy means too often a claim to do beneath it what no man
who respected his own honour, or cared for the good opinion of
his fellows, would dare to do in public. If international controversies
were conducted by the public exchange of despatches, wars and
aggressions would be almost unthinkable. The fear of causing a
panic on the Stock Exchange, the dread of alienating opinion both
abroad and at home, and the necessity of being accurate in statement
and cogent in argument, would soon impose a restraint upon diplomatists
that would transform international morals. It would be necessary
to argue questions solely on their merits, instead of conducting
a mere conflict of wills. There is, moreover, another argument
against the present secrecy of diplomacy. It is that the secrecy
is only partial. The enterprise of the press, and the desire of
some diplomatists to win for themselves partisans and supporters,
has gone far to make the intercourse of nations public. But the
mischief of this system of illicit revelation is that it is rarely
honest. Diplomatists divulge secrets with a purpose, and newspapers
publish the facts with a bias. Documents are edited, and conversations
distorted. One usually knows within a few hours when one Power
has delivered something resembling an ultimatum to another. But
the course of events is always represented in each country from
a standpoint favourable to the diplomacy of that country. An exaggeration
or distortion published in Paris or London is of course at once
officially denied in Berlin. But as the denial almost invariably
denies too much, we do not by this process arrive at truth. The
mischief of a dishonest and partial publicity is only to be cured
by an abandonment of the fiction of secrecy. That must be the
aim of any sincerely democratic party. But clearly it is not quite
at every stage or in every detail that diplomacy can as yet, if
ever, achieve complete publicity. The early phases of a negotiation,
whether between individuals or societies or nations, may gain
something by being confidential. Much may be effected in conversation
by a tactful Ambassador which could with difficulty be achieved
through an exchange of despatches, particularly if every sentence
were penned with a view to publication. But even over the preliminary
steps of a confidential negotiation Parliament ought to have some
check. For it is precisely in these preliminaries that a Minister
lays down the lines on which the subsequent fate of the transaction
will depend.

The mechanism by which secrecy can at certain stages be preserved,
and control none the less secured, has already been discovered
in one form or another by several foreign Parliaments. In France
a Sub-Committee chosen through the Bureaux from the whole Chamber
examines the Budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and contrives
by this means to exercise in private a certain check upon the
Minister. The Sub-Committee of the Senate conducts on occasion
elaborate retrospective enquiries into past transactions---as
for example after the Morocco crisis of 1911. In Austro-Hungary
"delegations" from the two Parliaments discuss Foreign
Policy with the Minister. In Germany a Federal Council representing
the Governments of the federated States of the Empire has certain
rights of control, and its sanction is required for a declaration
of war. But the most powerful of all these bodies is the Foreign
Affairs Committee of the United States Senate. Sitting in private
it discusses with the Secretary of State even the details of his
policy, and studies his treaties line by line before they can
be ratified. Its record is unfortunately by no means encouraging,
for it has prevented the conclusion of many treaties which would
assuredly have made for peace. But a Committee can be no better
than the House from which it is chosen. The Senate stands for
organised commercial interests and for the sectional selfishness
of the individual States. It would not be reasonable to argue
that effects which manifest themselves under the peculiar conditions
which prevail at Washington, would be reproduced by a similar
institution in our country.

The proposal which arises from these preliminary considerations
shapes itself somewhat thus: There might be elected from the House
of Commons by ballot on a proportional basis, either annually
or for the duration of a Parliament , a small standing Committee
for the special consideration of foreign affairs. It should be
large enough to represent fairly every phase of opinion---seven
or eight members would be a minimum---but not so large as to make
businesslike procedure difficult. It would meet periodically at
frequent intervals both during the session of Parliament and in
the recess. It should be summoned if any new situation demanded
a decision which involved a departure from a policy previously
sanctioned. It should have the right to demand the production,
under the seal of confidence. of all essential documents and despatches.
The Foreign Secretary would naturally be present at its deliberations.
It would also be useful that it should have the power to request
the attendance, on occasion, of experts in special questions,
both official and unofficial. It should be consulted in the negotiations
which precede the drafting of treaties, as well as in the later
phases when the bargain is embodied in a final form of words.
It would be unwise and unnecessary formally to require the Foreign
Secretary to abide by the decision of the majority of this Committee.
That would involve too wide a departure from our present traditions,
But it should be provided that in the event of a capital disagreement,
either the Minister or the Committee should have the right at
any time to refer their differences to the House of Commons. Over
certain acts, such as the issue of an ultimatum, a declaration
of war or the conclusion of a treaty, the Committee might be armed
with a right of veto, pending the decision of Parliament. The
general idea of such a Committee would be that it should exercise
over the Foreign Office the control which the Cabinet so rarely
exercises to any purpose. Its members would give to foreign affairs,
as the members of a Cabinet cannot, a close attention. Most of
them would be well-informed in some degree before they were elected,
and all, with these new opportunities and new responsibilities,
would tend to become expert. They would not in their debates be
thinking of the fate of their own measures and the independence
of their own departments as Cabinet Ministers often do. Nor would
they, in the privacy of a committee room, be fettered by the party
ties which oppress the private member in the division lobby. Three
claims may be made for the adoption of such a system as this.
It would give some guarantee, if the Committee was well selected,
that the policy of the Foreign Office really reflected the will
of the nation. It would place a check upon rash actions and Machiavellian
designs. It would also help to secure, by the wisdom of several
heads, a higher level of efficiency than the Foreign Office at
present attains. There would still remain to a strong and capable
Minister a considerable range of unfettered action. He would have
to face the test of frequent and intimate debate. He would not
be free to conclude treaties binding on his country for years
to come, or to send despatches which might provoke immediate war,
save with the sanction of the Committee. But over the general
conduct of foreign affairs he would remain the responsible Minister,
subject only to the risk that if in vital matters he ignored its
opinion, the Committee would appeal against him to the House of
Commons. In practice the first concern of a Minister would be
to keep his Committee with him, to lead it if he were strong and
capable; to follow it, if he were a man of timid character and
moderate ability.

It may be necessary to answer certain objections which this
scheme suggests. It will be said, perhaps, that secrecy could
not be secured if all despatches were open to the members of the
committee. That objection ignores the fact that all secrets are
at present shared, in theory at least, among the members of the
Cabinet, not to mention the higher officials at the Foreign Office.
There is a better chance of finding discretion among eight or
nine men than among twenty. Some leakage there would be, but is
there none at present? The Committee would realise that its power
depended on its own conduct, and it would doubtless require the
resignation of any member who flagrantly and wilfully betrayed
a confidence. It may also be urged that to concede so much power
to a Committee representing all parties would be a departure from
our system of government by majority. But the majority in the
House would also have the majority in the Committee. Moreover,
this objection ignores the fact that we have of recent years discarded
the theory of party government in foreign affairs, and substituted
for it a theory of "continuity." Finally, it will be
said that the existence of such a Committee would destroy such
control of foreign affairs as the whole House possesses at present.
To those who realise how little control it does in fact possess,
that will not seem a grave objection. The present system of questions,
the present occasional debates, need not be interfered with. The
final control of the whole House would remain unimpaired in the
event of a disagreement between the Committee and the Minister.
The House would, in fact, have conferred on certain elected delegates
a real authority, in the place of a nominal control which it cannot
at present render effective. The only serious inconvenience would
be, so far as I can foresee, that a member of the Committee, who
was in opposition on any serious issue to the Minister, would
have to fight him in the whole House---if he could fight him there
at all---with his hands tied. He could not freely use in public
debate the confidential knowledge which he had acquired in Committee.
But after all, it is better to be able to make private use of
full knowledge, than to fight publicly but in the dark, with no
real knowledge at all. A confidential Committee would not offer
a perfect system of control. But the reasons which prevent Parliament
from developing an effective public control over the details of
diplomacy are likely to be permanent. It is wiser to recognise
that this latter ideal is in our day unattainable, and to seek
for the best substitute within our reach.

There are certain other minor points on which a democracy jealous
of its rights would insist. The diplomatic service, both within
and outside the Foreign Office, ought not to be as it is at present,
the close preserve of the upper class, jealously guarded by a
system of nomination. The Levantine Consular service, which is
filled by open competition, shows, if I may trust my own observation
in the Near East, a much higher level of ability and competence
than the more aristocratic diplomatic service proper. A consul
in Salonica invariably knows much more of Turkey, its people and
its languages, and is usually, in addition, an abler man than
the distinguished person who draws an immense salary for presiding
over the Embassy at Constantinople. Our Ambassadors, moreover,
are rarely men of human and popular sympathies. Our consuls, on
the other hand, in this capable Near Eastern corps, are usually
as humane and generous by temperament, as they are intelligent
and well-informed. The spirit of our diplomacy would gain in liberality
and in humanity, as well as in ability and in the habit of hard
work and careful study, if the service were recruited by open
competition and its higher posts filled on the ground of merit
alone. The ornamental side of diplomacy is rapidly becoming obsolete.
Treaties and alliances are no longer made by the gay arts of the
courtier. On the other hand, the advantage of appointing such
a man as Mr. Bryce to such a post as Washington is apparent. Neither
a courtier nor a trained diplomatist, he has none the less won
the confidence of the American democracy, and immensely improved
the relations of the two peoples. His personality means something
to American citizens. Much might be gained by sending men of eminence
in letters or politics to represent us in every country where
public opinion is a real factor in diplomacy. Another proposal
which may deserve a passing mention is that the Foreign Office
should issue a weekly gazette, containing certainly all the despatches
which could with safety and propriety be issued, and possibly
also an occasional editorial article to explain our policy. We
depend at present for our official information on Blue-books devoted
to special subjects, issued at infrequent intervals and usually
too late to be of much real service. If the same material reached
us promptly in weekly instalments , its value would be immensely
enhanced. For any interpretation of the British Government's policy,
we and our European neighbours must depend on the Times,
which is usually, but not always, inspired, and often pours into
the official draught some liquor from its own cellars. The editing
of these leading articles would be an anxious task, and perhaps
the Foreign Office, which at present finds dumb secrecy an easier
part than cautious and temperate speech, would shrink from this
bold suggestion. But the advantages to be gained by the prompt
periodical publication of official information are sufficiently
obvious, nor would this practice carry with it any apparent risks.
Half the unrest in Europe comes from the effort to divine the
real thoughts of a Government through the rare speeches of its
members, the still rarer appearances of its Blue-books, and the
daily, but not always authoritative pronouncements of newspapers
which it inspires but cannot fully control. To issue such a weekly
diary would create confidence by a wise publicity, provide a prompt
method of removing misunderstandings alike abroad and at home,
and contribute at the same time to build up, by the provision
of full and accurate information, an instructed public opinion.

It is only by concentrating on such proposals as these, but
more especially on the creation of a permanent Committee for foreign
policy, that a democracy may hope to exert a steady influence
on the factors which make for peace and war, govern the growth
of armaments, and limit our opportunities for humane service in
the world. In vain do we seek by spasmodic agitation to resist
some sudden encroachment of militarism, to oppose a war already
begun, or to unmake a treaty already ratified. These things depend
on the main lines of our foreign policy, our permanent alliances,
our understandings and misunderstandings, our rivalry with this
Continental Power, our obligations to the other, and the posture
for the moment of the struggle for ascendancy in Europe. These
larger matters of policy are debated rarely on platforms and never
in Parliament. Until we can by some means control them, our agitations
beat in vain against occult forces and secret obstacles, whose
presence and power we dimly discern.